Drones have taken the photography industry by storm and have created a new type of photography that is sought out for a variety of purposes.

Drones come in a range of sizes, have different features and components, and prices for drones vary greatly. If you’re like thousands of other photographers out there and want to jump into the drone phography and videography, then there are a few things to know and to consider before purchasing and launching your new tool into the air.

The disruptive economics of unmanned vehicles are taking hold. Here’s how to think about the drone economy and your place in it.

You might think of drones as toys or flying cameras for the GoPro set, and that is still the lion’s share of the business. But like the smartphone and other examples of the “commercialization of enterprise” before them, drones are now being outfitted with business-grade software and becoming serious data-collection platforms — hardware as open and extensible as a smartphone, with virtually limitless app potential. As in any app economy, surprising and ingenious uses will emerge that we haven’t even thought of yet; and predictable and powerful apps will improve over time.

It’s an interesting time for photographers, with previously unavailable technologies allowing them to capture breathtaking never-before-seen imagery. The footage below captured by drone manufacturer DJI is one such example.

Too dangerous for a manned aircraft, a drone was the safest bet when a DJI team decided to capture footage of the erupting Bárðarbunga volcano in Iceland. Geophysicist for the National Icelandic Civil Protection, Bjorn Oddsson, told ABC News, “The volume of the lava is the largest we’ve seen in Iceland for 230 years.”

And check this out: the camera flew so low into the fissure that the GoPro camera attached to the drone literally melted — its lens turned into a jelly blob on the front of the camera body (though luckily, the SD card was salvaged). Because of DJI built-in technology, the device was able to detect trouble and fly itself back to a landing point, saving this magnificent footage from being lost in the belly of the volcano.

Drones have been a hot topic in the news for some time. Depending on what you’ve read, they’re devastatingly effective weapons of war, the next big threat to personal privacy, a revolutionary leap in video technology, or hazardous toys capable of chopping your fingers off.

To be fair, there’s a measure of truth to all those statements. But you might be surprised to learn that drones will soon affect our everyday lives in a host of useful ways. People are already using them to deliver fast food to hungry teens in Virginia, improve the productivity of Midwestern farms, and even protect rhinos and elephants in Africa from poachers.

In the next year, almost 2.3 million of the unmanned aircraft will be sold, according to market analysis firm Skylogic Research. And the vast majority will be the multi­rotor models embraced by apple farmers, wedding photographers, and search-and-rescue workers. [Keep Reading]

Check the 80+ list of the top commercial drone events of 2016 by skytango. Which events will you visit this year to keep updated on the drone industry, develop your professional network and increase your sales?

Following a major milestone for the domestic drone industry last week, industry insiders are expecting a big uptick in dollars invested in U.S. drone-tech companies — just maybe not an immediate one.

As we previously reported, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration implemented Part 107, or Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems rules, bringing some eagerly awaited clarity to the industry.

The regulations don’t allow for commercial use of drones at night, flying of drones over people or flying of drones beyond the visual line of sight. Companies still have to seek ad hoc exemptions from federal authorities to do these things for business purposes.

Depending on how quickly the DOT, FAA and other relevant offices can evaluate exemption requests and grant them, the Part 107 rule could actually slow the roll out of anything like drone delivery services, or pervasive use of drones for news gathering, surveillance or inspections in populated areas and at night.

Global UAS Practice co-chair at the D.C. law firm Hogan Lovells, Lisa Ellman, also a co-executive director of the Commercial Drone Alliance, said:

“Of course, Silicon Valley is operating at lightning speed and D.C. is operating at the pace of bureaucracy… But it’s understandable in ways because the FAA, DOT and others need more information before they can draft regulations.”

In this next cycle, she said, she wants to see drone tech and service providers step up and provide all the data they can to regulators, but also to the public, so that people can learn more about the potential benefits of drones.

Ellman believes that even the Part 107 rules as they stand today will help open the doors for more innovation and investments in the field, especially around drone-tech education and safety-related technologies.

Menlo Ventures’ Managing Director Venky Ganesan, an investor in Flirtey, the delivery drone-tech venture, and DeDrone, a maker of drone detection systems, agreed. “With clarification about the rules of the game, investments flourish in any industry. Once people know what the rules are they can decide how to play it.”

Ganesan expects investment in vertical, or industry-specialized drone-tech startups and drone services, to ramp up directly as a result of Part 107.

“Nobody wakes up and says I want to use drones at work. They want to solve business problems and know what’s going on around a farm or their pipelines. Drones can help them do that, but many will rely on service providers and specialists for this,” the investor said.

Longer term, he expects a larger capital outlay to flow to drone-tech companies after regulators allow beyond the line of sight flying of drones, using autonomous flight, collision avoidance and other remote piloting systems.

Those who are not already evaluating drone-tech deals, Ganesan believes, may have seriously underestimated the long-term impact of the technology.

An old Silicon Valley chestnut states that short-term effects of major new technologies are generally overestimated, but long-run effects are underestimated.

Subtraction Capital General Partner Paul Willard, who previously worked at Boeing as an aerodynamics engineer, said, “Setting a high bar that companies know how to clear” is the most important thing that regulators can do to ensure the U.S. is a leader in the drones industry.

“There’s still need for a lot more clarity before U.S. markets are at the fore. But plenty of companies are getting funding now and off to the races, even if that’s somewhere not in the U.S.,” Willard noted. Subtraction Capital is an investor in Zipline, which is launching a medical delivery drone service in Rwanda.

He also compared the drone-tech market to that for medical devices and pharmaceuticals.

Medical devices and new drugs are often launched and studied beyond the U.S. before the companies making them raise large venture or private equity rounds to come into compliance with strict U.S. regulations.

Several other startup founders and drone-tech investors have shared worries with TechCrunch that commercial drone regulation requiring tech companies to seek out variances could inadvertently benefit winners and create barriers to competition for others who do not get federal exemptions, or do not get them as quickly as others.

So what’s Amazon’s ultimate aim in delivery? After talking to analysts, partners and competitors, and prying some very minimal input from Amazon itself, I suspect the company has a two-tiered vision for the future of shipping.

First, it’s not trying to replace third-party shippers. Instead, over the next few years, Amazon wants to add as much capacity to its operations as possible, and rather than replace partners like UPS and FedEx, it is spending boatloads on planes, trucks, crowdsourcing and other novel delivery services to add to its overall capacity and efficiency.

Amazon’s longer-term goal is more fantastical — and, if it succeeds, potentially transformative. It wants to escape the messy vicissitudes of roads and humans. It wants to go fully autonomous, up in the sky. The company’s drone program, which many in the tech press dismissed as a marketing gimmick when Mr. Bezos unveiled it on “60 Minutes” in 2013, is central to this future; drones could be combined with warehouses manned by robots and trucks that drive themselves to unlock a new autonomous future for Amazon.

many companies are exploring drone delivery to get the job done. In areas where the power grid has been leapfrogged by home solar, solar-powered drones can be the final link in the supply chain, safely and reliably depositing orders directly to consumers — no roads or fossil fuels necessary. Each rooftop panel could become a charging station for delivery drones. The drones can make deliveries throughout a region while stopping to recharge on homes with charging stations connected to solar panels. Without having to go back to its home base, the deliveries are faster, more efficient, and cheaper. Plus, the customers get credit for the power that the drones sip from their panels.

This repurposed Nintendo Power Glove allows users to control drones with a flick of the wrist.

Engineering student Nolan Moore described the goal of the Power Glove as "to revamp the 1989 Nintendo Power Glove with modern sensors and wireless communication, giving you the ability to use gesture and motion controls with almost anything you can think of, in style."

Moore reengineered the glove, taking out its original electronic system and replacing it with a home-built one.

Via Wi-Fi, Moore can control a drone by moving his hand. Holding his hand flat, palm facing the ground, makes the drone hover, making a fist and tilting it in any direction affects "pitch and roll" and pointing a finger up or down affects altitude.

Moore is tracking the development of the project on his Hackaday page.

Drones in the past few years have become essential tools for many industries, including film, agriculture, and security.

And each year those industries want drones with increasingly broad capabilities, which is why 3D Robotics, Sony, and Autodesk have teamed up to create a drone that can capture video and rapidly convert that footage into 3-D maps of an area, The Verge reports.

3D Robotics says that it has plans to move way beyond 3-D mapping. The company says it plans to introduce a multispectral and thermal camera, which would allow agricultural sites, chemical plants, and oil rigs to scan materials from the air.